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A construction worker works on a 2000 bed field hospital under construction at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver on April 10, 2020. The overflow hospital, when completed, is designed to be used for COVID-19 patients who no longer require ICU beds to ease congestion at local hospitals.

Colorado continues to see a slowing, and even a plateauing, of novel coronavirus cases as social distancing and the effects of the statewide stay-at-home order come into view, while the volume of patients being admitted to hospitals has flattened, state health officials said Tuesday.

The news comes three weeks after Gov. Jared Polis’s order, which closed nonessential businesses and provided strict guidance on when people should be leaving their homes. The governor, along with health experts, cautioned that the effects of the mandate would lag, with new cases and deaths still increasing during that time.

At least 329 people now have died of complications related to COVID-19, the highly infectious illness caused by the virus, state health officials said Tuesday.

A total of 1,556 people have been hospitalized in Colorado, though UCHealth officials for the first time released recovery data from their network of hospitals, showing more than 370 people who recovered from the illness have been sent home. Top health officials on Tuesday said statewide recovery data should be available sometime this week.

Nearly 8,000 people have now tested positive for the virus, even as state officials say a lack of mass testing means the actual number is likely four to 10 times higher.

But despite those numbers continuing to climb, health officials on Tuesday said social distancing has been working, leading to a flattening of the curve that has become a pandemic mantra of politicians and health care providers alike.

“Really over the next couple days we’ll be able to determine whether the level of social distancing is enough to lead to a decrease in the daily case count,” Dr. Rachel Herlihy, Colorado’s state epidemiologist, said on a conference call with reporters.

That flattening of the curve has led to high numbers of people being hospitalized, but not to a degree that has overwhelmed any Colorado hospitals, Scott Bookman, the state’s incident commander for COVID-19, said on the call.

“The situation is changing almost daily”

Since the coronavirus pandemic began sweeping the state, the Department of Public Health and Environment has fielded hundreds of requests for personal protective equipment from hospitals, local health departments and other workers on the frontlines, according to state records.

“Local stock is extremely low,” reads one such a request.

But while there is still a national shortage of gear such as face shields, N95 masks and surgical masks, at least one hospital official said he’s “cautiously optimistic” that admissions for COVID-19 are slowing.

“It feels to me that the situation is changing almost daily in what our expectations are,” said Thomas MacKenzie, chief quality officer at Denver Health.

Denver Health has requested ventilators from the state health department and other vendors. As of last week, the hospital had 70 ventilators available, about 50 short of what officials expect Denver Health will need if there is a surge in patients, MacKenzie said.

“We’re very fearful of the situation in which we would run out of ventilators,” he said, noting that Denver Health might need fewer ventilators than it requested now that admissions show signs of slowing.

So far, Denver Health has discharged at least 88 patients who had been hospitalized for COVID-19.

The hospital’s supply of personal protective gear is also at “a potentially dangerous place to be” if there was a sudden surge of patients. Denver Health, MacKenzie said, has asked employees to wear masks longer than normal and is limiting the number of people who go inside rooms with COVID-19 patients.

“It’s been intermittently worrisome given we’ve come close to running out,” he said.

Requests Denver Health officials have made for protective gear have not arrived because suppliers can’t produce the equipment fast enough — or when they do, the supplies are shipped to coronavirus hot spots such as in New York City.

It’s not just hospitals that are experiencing shortages in protective gear. The Jefferson County Coroner’s Office is also on a waiting list for N95 masks.

Still preparing for a surge

The state is continuing construction on emergency hospitals at the Colorado Convention Center in downtown Denver and the Budweiser Event Center in Loveland, Bookman said, though officials may decide to scale back if the additional space is not needed.

Three former medical facilities in Pueblo, Westminster and Grand Junction also are being retrofitted in case there’s a surge in patients, the state emergency operations center said in a news release.

St. Anthony North Health Campus in Westminster will have an 88-bed capacity; St. Mary-Corwin Medical Center in Pueblo will be able to hold 120 patients; and the Western Slope Memory Care in Grand Junction plans to fit 50 people. All sites have a May 8 target for completion, the news release stated.

“While the curve is flattening, we don’t want to take our eye off the bigger picture,” Bookman said. “We want to make sure we see capacity built.”

Construction costs on the Colorado Convention Center and Budweiser Event Center sites are expected to total $71 million, according to the governor’s office, with the state paying 25% of that cost, or $17.75 million. But the Polis administration believes FEMA should foot the entire bill.

“The governor knows it is critical that Colorado is prepared for the worst-case scenario,” spokeswoman Shelby Wieman said.

The news from UCHealth showed some of the optimism that hospitals are managing to stay afloat during this health crisis. The recovered patients from those hospitals include nearly 200 in metro Denver, 120 in northern Colorado and 50 in the southern part of the state.

The number of hospitalizations in Colorado remain near record highs, but top hospital officials are seeing some positive trends in terms of slowing the new coronavirus’s spread, Dr. Richard Zane, UCHealth chief innovation officer and emergency services executive director, said in a statement.

“The rate of increase of new cases has slowed, and our number of hospitalized patients is growing more slowly, but it is essential that Coloradans continue to practice social distancing,” Zane said. “The minute we let up, we will likely see cases spike again.”

Prepping for life returning to normal

Health officials on Tuesday also discussed the heavy lift needed to begin restoring some semblance of normal life in Colorado.

That includes mass testing — which is not yet available — along with hiring scores more people at the state and local levels to conduct contact tracing for those who may have been exposed to the illness.

Contact tracing — in which a person who tested positive details anyone they may have been with during the lead-up to the illness — is time-consuming and resource-intensive, Herlihy said.

The state health department is considering some forms of technology to assist in the effort, but is not pursuing cellphone tracking, she said.

“We’re balancing using technology to support this work but obviously privacy is a priority,” Herlihy said.

Cellphone tracking already has been used in Israel and Russia as part of government efforts to track the disease’s spread, and has prompted a national debate in the U.S. over privacy vs. public health concerns.

In neighboring New Mexico, Gov. Lujan Grisham said her state will use cellphone data to track how well New Mexicans are social distancing.

Sam Tabachnik is a breaking news reporter for The Denver Post. He previously wrote for NBC News, the Washington Post and the New Orleans Times-Picayune. A Boston native, he's not afraid to root for Tom Brady in the Mile High City.

Jessica Seaman covers health for The Denver Post. A native of North Carolina, Jessica joined The Post after stints as a reporter in Greensboro, North Carolina and Little Rock, Arkansas. She is a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill.